Gathering Our Teaching Patterns

Teaching Patterns
 
College teachers know a great deal about planning and running classes. Most have never read textbooks on pedagogy or taken courses in curriculum theory. With little formal training they can lay out a series of lessons or organize a day's lesson because they have learned something more important than ways to talk about teaching. They observed and internalized teaching patterns.

Teaching patterns are sequences of action that aim to lead students through the steps of learning. Some patterns unfold over time, giving a sequence to the activities over a semester. Other patterns, such as a response to a student's question, happen almost instantly. Through observation and discovery, a teacher finds certain sequences of action that seem to work. Without necessarily becoming aware of the pattern itself, teachers use working sequences to organize learning.

Classroom ethnographers have studied some of the teaching patterns found in typical classes. For example, most classes will follow the IRE pattern when involving students. In it, the teacher Initiates discussion on a subject by posing a question; the student Responds by trying to provide the known answer; the teacher then Evaluates the response. This is an example of a short, quick pattern. A longer one would be the patterns for organizing most lessons. Typically, the lesson starts with an assignment that should be completed beforehand. The class session presents new information or reviews that in the assignment. Finally, students are expected to demonstrate, through essay or test, the degree to which they have mastered the lesson. Countless teachers use teaching patterns such as these. Interestingly, few have stopped to consider what it is they have come to accept.

Transforming a lesson to a new medium creates a moment when it is necessary to become critically conscious of the teaching patterns that have become our habits. While the IRE may be effective in a classroom, can it work in an asynchronous class? Efforts to twist the new medium so that we can force fit patterns that are better suited to another setting will prove frustrating. Instead, we may need to modify or adopt different interaction sequences. The first step, then, is to look carefully at what patterns we typically use when planning and conducting our lessons.

Gathering Some Patterns

There are many types of teaching patterns that could be collected. We will focus on two kinds: (1) those that shape the general flow of our semester, and (2) those that define our typical daily lessons. Here is how you can begin:

Worksheet #1

Write down a description of the sequence that you follow in a typical lesson. At the end, you may want to reflect about the pattern you think you are following. However, do not worry much about the actual pattern itself. We will look at them more carefully when we get together.

Worksheet #2

In the worksheet below, list the sequence that you use to organize this course. This may be described as a list of topics, activities, goals or whatever way that you think about the course when putting it together. If you use more than one way to sequence the course, divide the right hand column and list both. The table is organized around 15 weeks of the average semester as a general guideline. Feel free to adjust it to suit your course.

Reflect on this sequence. How would you describe the organizing pattern that you use?